American power and influence have been decisive factors
for democracy and security throughout the last half-century. However, after
more than two years of serious effort, this Commission has concluded that
without significant reforms, American power and influence cannot be sustained.
To be of long-term benefit to us and to others, that power and influence
must be disciplined by strategy, defined as the systematic determination
of the proper relationship of ends to means in support of American principles,
interests, and national purpose.

This Commission was established to redefine national
security in this age and to do so in a more comprehensive fashion than
any other similar effort since 1947. We have carried out our duties in
an independent and totally bipartisan spirit. This report is a blueprint
for reorganizing the U.S. national security structure in order to focus
that structure's attention on the most important new and serious problems
before the nation, and to produce organizational competence capable of
addressing those problems creatively.

The key to our vision is the need for a culture of coordinated
strategic planning to permeate all U.S. national security institutions.
Our challenges are no longer defined for us by a single prominent threat.
Without creative strategic planning in this new environment, we will default
in time of crisis to a reactive posture. Such a posture is inadequate to
the challenges and opportunities before us.

We have concluded that, despite the end of the Cold War
threat, America faces distinctly new dangers, particularly to the homeland
and to our scientific and educational base. These dangers must be addressed
forthwith.

We call upon the new President, the new administration,
the new Congress, and the country at large to consider and debate our recommendations
in the pragmatic spirit that has characterized America and its people in
each new age.

Gary Hart Warren

Co-Chair

B. Rudman

Co-Chair

Preface

The U.S. Commission on National Security/21st Century
was born more than two years ago out of a conviction that the entire range
of U.S. national security policies and processes required reexamination
in light of new circumstances. Those circumstances encompass not only the
changed geopolitical reality after the Cold War, but also the significant
technological, social, and intellectual changes that are occurring.

Prominent among such changes is the information revolution
and the accelerating discontinuities in a range of scientific and technological
areas. Another is the increased integration of global finance and commerce,
commonly called "globalization." Yet another is the ascendance
of democratic governance and free-market economics to unprecedented levels,
and another still the increasing importance of both multinational and non-governmental
actors in global affairs. The routines of professional life, too, in business,
university, and other domains in advanced countries have been affected
by the combination of new technologies and new management techniques. The
internal cultures of organizations have been changing, usually in ways
that make them more efficient and effective.

The creators of this Commission believed that unless
the U.S. government adapts itself to these changes-and to dramatic changes
still to come-it will fall out of step with the world of the 21st century.
Nowhere will the risks of doing so be more manifest than in the realm of
national security.

Mindful of the likely scale of change ahead, this Commission's
sponsors urged it to be bold and comprehensive in its undertaking. That
meant thinking out a quarter century, not just to the next election or
to the next federal budget cycle. That meant searching out how government
should work, undeterred by the institutional inertia that today determines
how it does work. Not least, it meant conceiving national security not
as narrowly defined, but as it ought to be defined-to include economics,
technology, and education for a new age in which novel opportunities and
challenges coexist uncertainly with familiar ones.

The fourteen Commissioners involved in this undertaking,
one that engaged their energies for over two years, have worked hard and
they have worked well.*2 Best of all, despite diverse experiences and views,
they have transcended partisanship to work together in recognition of the
seriousness of the task: nothing less than to assure the well-being of
this Republic a quarter century hence.

This Commission has conducted its work in three phases.
Phase I was dedicated to understanding how the world will likely evolve
over the next 25 years. From that basis in prospective reality, Phase II
devised a U.S. national security strategy to deal with that world. Phase
III aims to reform government structures and processes to enable the U.S.
government to implement that strategy, or, indeed, any strategy that would
depart from the embedded routines of the last half-century.

Phase I concluded in September 1999 with the publication
of New World Coming: American Security in the 21st Century.*3 Phase II
produced the April 2000 publication, Seeking a National Strategy: A Concert
for Preserving Security and Promoting Freedom. Phase III, presented in
these pages, is entitled Road Map for National Security: Imperative for
Change. This report summarizes enough of the Commission's Phase I and Phase
II work to establish an intellectual basis for understanding this Phase
III report, but it does not repeat the texts of prior phases in detail.
For those seeking fuller background to this report, the Commission's earlier
works should be consulted directly.*4

In Road Map for National Security, the Commission has
endeavored to complete the logic of its three phases of work, moving from
analysis to strategy to the redesign of the structures and processes of
the U.S. national security system. For example, in Phase I the Commission
stressed that mass-casualty terrorism directed against the U.S. homeland
was of serious and growing concern. It therefore proposed in Phase II a
strategy that prioritizes deterring, defending against, and responding
effectively to such dangers. Thus, in Phase III, it recommends a new National
Homeland Security Agency to consolidate and refine the missions of the
nearly two dozen disparate departments and agencies that have a role in
U.S. homeland security today.

That said, not every Phase I finding and not every Phase
II proposal has generated a major Phase III recommendation. Not every aspect
of U.S. national security organization needs an overhaul. Moreover, some
challenges are best met, and some opportunities are best achieved, by crafting
better policies, not by devising new organizational structures or processes.
Where appropriate, this report notes those occasions and is not reluctant
to suggest new policy directions.

Many of the recommendations made herein require legislation
to come into being. Many others, however, require only Presidential order
or departmental directive. These latter recommendations are not necessarily
of lesser importance and can be implemented quickly.

The Commission anticipates that some of its recommendations
will win wide support. Other recommendations may generate controversy and
even opposition, as is to be expected when dealing with such serious and
complex issues. We trust that the ensuing debate will ultimately yield
the very best use of this Commission's work for the benefit of the American
people.

Organizational reform is not a panacea. There is no perfect
organizational design, no flawless managerial fix. The reason is that organizations
are made up of people, and people invariably devise informal means of dealing
with one another in accord with the accidents of personality and temperament.
Even excellent organizational structure cannot make impetuous or mistaken
leaders patient or wise, but poor organizational design can make good leaders
less effective.

Sound organization is important. It can ensure that problems
reach their proper level of decision quickly and efficiently and can balance
the conflicting imperatives inherent in any national security decision-system-between
senior involvement and expert input, between speed and the need to consider
a variety of views, between tactical flexibility and strategic consistency.
President Eisenhower summarized it best: "Organization cannot make
a genius out of a dunce. But it can provide its head with the facts he
needs, and help him avoid misinformed mistakes."

Most important, good organization helps assure accountability.
At every level of organization, elected officials-and particularly the
President as Commander-in-Chief-must be

able to ascertain quickly and surely who is in charge.
But in a government that has expanded through serial incremental adjustment
rather than according to an overall plan, finding those responsible to
make things go right, or those responsible when things go wrong, can be
a very formidable task. This, we may be sure, is not what the Founders
had in mind.

This Commission has done its best to step up to the mandate
of its Charter. It is now up to others to do their best to bring the benefits
of this Commission's effort into the institutions of American government.

Charles G. Boyd, General, USAF (Ret.)

Executive Director

Executive Summary

After our examination of the new strategic environment
of the next quarter century (Phase I) and of a strategy to address it (Phase
II), this Commission concludes that significant changes must be made in
the structures and processes of the U.S. national security apparatus. Our
institutional base is in decline and must be rebuilt. Otherwise, the United
States risks losing its global influence and critical leadership role.

We offer recommendations for organizational change in
five key areas:

1 ensuring the security of the American homeland;

2 recapitalizing America's strengths in science and education;

3 redesigning key institutions of the Executive Branch;

4 overhauling the U.S. government personnel system; and

5 reorganizing Congress's role in national security affairs.

We have taken a broad view of national security. In the
new era, sharp distinctions between "foreign" and "domestic"
no longer apply. We do not equate national security with "defense."
We do believe in the centrality of strategy, and of seizing opportunities
as well as confronting dangers. If the structures and processes of the
U.S. government stand still amid a world of change, the United States will
lose its capacity to shape history, and will instead be shaped by it.

Securing the National Homeland

The combination of unconventional weapons proliferation
with the persistence of international terrorism will end the relative invulnerability
of the U.S. homeland to catastrophic attack. A direct attack against American
citizens on American soil is likely over the next quarter century. The
risk is not only death and destruction but also a demoralization that could
undermine U.S. global leadership. In the face of this threat, our nation
has no coherent or integrated governmental structures.

We therefore recommend the creation of a new independent
National Homeland Security Agency (NHSA) with responsibility for planning,
coordinating, and integrating various U.S. government activities involved
in homeland security. NHSA would be built upon the Federal Emergency Management
Agency, with the three organizations currently on the front line of border
security-the Coast Guard, the Customs Service, and the Border Patrol- transferred
to it. NHSA would not only protect American lives, but also assume responsibility
for overseeing the protection of the nation's critical infrastructure,
including information technology.

The NHSA Director would have Cabinet status and would
be a statutory advisor to the National Security Council. The legal foundation
for the National Homeland Security Agency would rest firmly within the
array of Constitutional guarantees for civil liberties. The observance
of these guarantees in the event of a national security emergency would
be safeguarded by NHSA's interagency coordinating activities-which would
include the Department of Justice-as well as by its conduct of advance
exercises.

The potentially catastrophic nature of homeland attacks
necessitates our being prepared to use the tremendous resources of the
Department of Defense (DoD). Therefore, the department needs to pay far
more attention to this mission in the future. We recommend that a new office
of Assistant Secretary for Homeland Security be created to oversee the
various DoD activities and ensure that the necessary resources are made
available.

New priorities also need to be set for the U.S. armed
forces in light of the threat to the homeland. We urge, in particular,
that the National Guard be given homeland security as a primary mission,
as the U.S. Constitution itself ordains. The National Guard should be reorganized,
trained, and equipped to undertake that mission.

Finally, we recommend that Congress reorganize itself
to accommodate this Executive Branch realignment, and that it also form
a special select committee for homeland security to provide Congressional
support and oversight in this critical area.

Recapitalizing America's Strengths in Science
and Education

Americans are living off the economic and security benefits
of the last three generations' investment in science and education, but
we are now consuming capital. Our systems of basic scientific research
and education are in serious crisis, while other countries are redoubling
their efforts. In the next quarter century, we will likely see ourselves
surpassed, and in relative decline, unless we make a conscious national
commitment to maintain our edge.

We also face unprecedented opportunity. The world is
entering an era of dramatic progress in bioscience and materials science
as well as information technology and scientific instrumentation. Brought
together and accelerated by nanoscience, these rapidly developing research
fields will transform our understanding of the world and our capacity to
manipulate it. The United States can remain the world's technological leader
if it makes the commitment to do so. But the U.S. government has seriously
underfunded basic scientific research in recent years. The quality of the
U.S. education system, too, has fallen well behind those of scores of other
nations. This has occurred at a time when vastly more Americans will have
to understand and work competently with science and math on a daily basis.

In this Commission's view, the inadequacies of our systems
of research and education pose a greater threat to U.S. national security
over the next quarter century than any potential conventional war that
we might imagine. American national leadership must understand these deficiencies
as threats to national security. If we do not invest heavily and wisely
in rebuilding these two core strengths, America will be incapable of maintaining
its global position long into the 21st century.

We therefore recommend doubling the federal research
and development budget by 2010, and instituting a more competitive environment
for the allotment of those funds.

We recommend further that the role of the President's
Science Advisor be elevated to oversee these and other critical tasks,
such as the resuscitation of the national laboratory system and the institution
of better inventory stewardship over the nation's science and technology
assets.

We also recommend a new National Security Science and
Technology Education Act to fund a comprehensive program to produce the
needed numbers of science and engineering professionals as well as qualified
teachers in science and math. This Act should provide loan forgiveness
incentives to attract those who have graduated and scholarships for those
still in school and should provide these incentives in exchange for a period
of K-12 teaching in science and math, or of military or government service.
Additional measures should provide resources to modernize laboratories
in science education, and expand existing programs aimed at economically-depressed
school districts.

Institutional Redesign

The dramatic changes in the world since the end of the
Cold War of the last half- century have not been accompanied by any major
institutional changes in the Executive Branch of the U.S. government. Serious
deficiencies exist that only a significant organizational redesign can
remedy. Most troublesome is the lack of an overarching strategic framework
guiding U.S. national security policymaking and resource allocation. Clear
goals and priorities are rarely set. Budgets are prepared and appropriated
as they were during the Cold War.

The Department of State, in particular, is a crippled
institution, starved for resources by Congress because of its inadequacies,
and thereby weakened further. Only if the State Department's internal weaknesses
are cured will it become an effective leader in the making and implementation
of the nation's foreign policy. Only then can it credibly seek significant
funding increases from Congress. The department suffers in particular from
an ineffective organizational structure in which regional and functional
policies do not serve integrated goals, and in which sound management,
accountability, and leadership are lacking.

For this and other reasons, the power to determine national
security policy has steadily migrated toward the National Security Council
(NSC) staff. The staff now assumes policymaking roles that many observers
have warned against. Yet the NSC staff's role as policy coordinator is
more urgently needed than ever, given the imperative of integrating the
many diverse strands of policymaking.

Meanwhile, the U.S. intelligence community is adjusting
only slowly to the changed circumstances of the post-Cold War era. While
the economic and political components of statecraft have assumed greater
prominence, military imperatives still largely drive the analysis and collection
of intelligence. Neither has America's overseas presence been properly
adapted to the new economic, social, political, and security realities
of the 21st century.

Finally, the Department of Defense needs to be overhauled.
The growth in staff and staff activities has created mounting confusion
and delay. The failure to outsource or privatize many defense support activities
wastes huge sums of money. The programming and budgeting process is not
guided by effective strategic planning. The weapons acquisition process
is so hobbled by excessive laws, regulations, and oversight strictures
that it can neither recognize nor seize opportunities for major innovation,
and its procurement bureaucracy weakens a defense industry that is already
in a state of financial crisis.

In light of such serious and interwoven deficiencies,
the Commission's initial recommendation is that strategy should once again
drive the design and implementation of U.S. national security policies.
That means that the President should personally guide a top-down strategic
planning process and that process should be linked to the allocation of
resources throughout the government. When submitting his budgets for the
various national security departments, the President should also present
an overall national security budget, focused on the nation's most critical
strategic goals. Homeland security, counter- terrorism, and science and
technology should be included.

We recommend further that the President's National Security
Advisor and NSC staff return to their traditional role of coordinating
national security activities and resist the temptation to become policymakers
or operators. The NSC Advisor should also keep a low public profile. Legislative,
press communications, and speech-writing functions should reside in the
White House staff, not separately in the NSC staff as they do today. The
higher the profile of the National Security Advisor the greater will be
the pressures from Congress to compel testimony and force Senate confirmation
of the position.

To reflect how central economics has become in U.S. national
security policy, we recommend that the Secretary of Treasury be named a
statutory member of the National Security Council. Responsibility for international
economic policy should return to the National Security Council. The President
should abolish the National Economic Council, distributing its domestic
economic policy responsibilities to the Domestic Policy Council.

Critical to the future success of U.S. national security
policies is a fundamental restructuring of the State Department. Reform
must ensure that responsibility and accountability are clearly established,
regional and functional activities are closely integrated, foreign assistance
programs are centrally planned and implemented, and strategic planning
is emphasized and linked to the allocation of resources.

We recommend that this be accomplished through the creation
of five Under Secretaries with responsibility for overseeing the regions
of Africa, Asia, Europe, Inter- America, and Near East/South Asia, and
a redefinition of the responsibilities of the Under Secretary for Global
Affairs. The restructuring we propose would position the State Department
to play a leadership role in the making and implementation of U.S. foreign
policy, as well as to harness the department's organizational culture to
the benefit of the U.S. government as a whole. Perhaps most important,
the Secretary of State would be free to focus on the most important policies
and negotiations, having delegated responsibility for integrating regional
and functional issues to the Under Secretaries.

Accountability would be matched with responsibility in
senior policymakers, who in serving the Secretary would be able to speak
for the State Department both within the interagency process and before
Congress. No longer would competing regional and functional perspectives
immobilize the department. At the same time, functional perspectives, whether
they be human rights, arms control, or the environment, will not disappear.
The Under Secretaries would be clearly accountable to the Secretary of
State, the President, and the Congress for ensuring that the appropriate
priority was given to these concerns. Someone would actually be in charge.

We further recommend that the activities of the U.S.
Agency for International Development be fully integrated into this new
State Department organization. Development aid is not an end in itself,
nor can it be successful if pursued independently of other U.S. programs
and diplomatic activities. Only a coordinated diplomatic and assistance
effort will advance the nation's goals abroad, whether they be economic
growth, democracy, or human rights.

The Secretary of State should give greater emphasis to
strategic planning in the State Department and link it directly to the
allocation of resources through the establishment of a Strategic Planning,
Assistance, and Budget Office. Rather than multiple Congressional appropriations,
the State Department should also be funded in a single integrated Foreign
Operations budget, which would include all foreign assistance programs
and activities as well as the expenses for all related personnel and operations.
Also, all U.S. Ambassadors, including the Permanent Representative to the
United Nations, should report directly to the Secretary of State, and a
major effort needs to be undertaken to "right-size" the U.S.
overseas presence.

The Commission believes that the resulting improvements
in the effectiveness and competency of the State Department and its overseas
activities would provide the basis for the significant increase in resources
necessary to carry out the nation's foreign policy in the 21st century.

As for the Department of Defense, resource issues are
also very much at stake in reform efforts. The key to success will be direct,
sustained involvement and commitment to defense reform on the part of the
President, Secretary of Defense, and Congressional leadership. We urge
first and foremost that the new Secretary of Defense reduce by ten to fifteen
percent the staffs of the Office of the Secretary of Defense, the Joint
Staff, the military services, and the regional commands. This would not
only save money but also achieve the decision speed and encourage the decentralization
necessary to succeed in the 21st century.

Just as critical, the Secretary of Defense should establish
a ten-year goal of reducing infrastructure costs by 20-25 percent through
steps to consolidate, restructure, outsource, and privatize as many DoD
support agencies and activities as possible. Only through savings in infrastructure
costs, which now take up nearly half of DoD's budget, will the department
find the funds necessary for modernization and for combat personnel in
the long-term.

The processes by which the Defense Department develops
its programs and budgets as well as acquires its weapons also need fundamental
reform. The most critical first step is for the Secretary of Defense to
produce defense policy and planning guidance that defines specific goals
and establishes relative priorities.

Together with the Congress, the Secretary of Defense
should move the Quadrennial Defense Review (QDR) to the second year of
a Presidential term. The current requirement, that it be done in an administration's
first year, spites the purpose of the activity. Such a deadline does not
allow the time or the means for an incoming administration to influence
the QDR outcome, and therefore for it to gain a stake in its conclusions.

We recommend a second change in the QDR, as well; namely
that the Secretary of Defense introduce a new process that requires the
Services and defense agencies to compete for the allocation of some resources
within the overall Defense budget. This, we believe, would give the Secretary
a vehicle to identify low priority programs and begin the process of reallocating
funds to more promising areas during subsequent budget cycles.

As for acquisition reform, the Commission is deeply concerned
with the downward spiral that has emerged in recent decades in relations
between the Pentagon as customer and the defense industrial base as supplier
of the nation's major weapons systems. Many innovative high-tech firms
are simply unable or unwilling to work with the Defense Department under
the weight of its auditing, contracting, profitability, investment, and
inspection regulations. These regulations also impair the Defense Department's
ability to function with the speed it needs to keep abreast of today's
rapid pace of technological innovation. Weapons development cycles average
nine years in an environment where technology now changes every twelve
to eighteen months in Silicon Valley-and the gap between private sector
and defense industry innovation continues to widen.

In place of a specialized "defense industrial base,"
we believe that the nation needs a national industrial base for defense
composed of a broad cross-section of commercial firms as well as the more
traditional defense firms. "New economy" sectors must be attracted
to work with the government on sound business and professional grounds;
the more traditional defense suppliers, which fill important needs unavailable
in the commercial sector, must be given incentives to innovate and operate
efficiently. We therefore recommend these major steps:

1 Establish and employ a two-track acquisition system,
one for major acquisitions and a "fast track" for a modest number
of potential breakthrough systems, especially those in the area of command
and control.

2 Return to the pattern of increased prototyping and
testing of selected weapons and support systems to foster innovation. We
should use testing procedures to gain knowledge and not to demonstrate
a program's ability to survive budgetary scrutiny.

3 Implement two-year defense budgeting solely for the
modernization element (R&D/procurement)of the Defense budget and expand
the use of multi-year procurement.

4 Modernize auditing and oversight requirements (by rewriting
relevant sections of U.S. Code, Title 10, and the Federal Acquisition Regulations)
with a goal of reducing the number of auditors and inspectors in the acquisition
system to a level commensurate with the budget they oversee.

Amidst the other process reforms for the Defense Department,
the Commission recognizes the need to modernize current force planning
methods. We conclude that the concept of two major, coincident wars is
a remote possibility supported neither by the main thrust of national intelligence
nor by this Commission's view of the likely future. It should be replaced
by a planning process that accelerates the transformation of capabilities
and forces better suited to, and thus likely to succeed in, the current
security environment. The Secretary of Defense should direct the DoD to
shift from the threat-based, force sizing process to one which measures
requirements against recent operational activity trends, actual intelligence
estimates of potential adversaries' capabilities, and national security
objectives as defined in the new administration's national security strategy-once
formulated.

The Commission furthermore recommends that the Secretary
of Defense revise the current categories of Major Force Programs (MFPs)
used in the Defense Program Review to correspond to the five military capabilities
the Commission prescribed in its Phase II report- strategic nuclear forces,
homeland security forces, conventional forces, expeditionary forces, and
humanitarian and constabulary forces.

Ultimately, the transformation process will blur the
distinction between expeditionary and conventional forces, as both types
of capabilities will eventually possess the technological superiority,
deployability, survivability, and lethality now called for in the expeditionary
forces. For the near term, however, those we call expeditionary capabilities
require the most emphasis. Consequently, we recommend that the Defense
Department devote its highest priority to improving and further developing
its expeditionary capabilities.

There is no more critical dimension of defense policy
than to guarantee U.S. commercial and military access to outer space. The
U.S. economy and military are vitally dependent on communications that
rely on space. The clear imperative for the new era is a comprehensive
national policy toward space and a coherent governmental machinery to carry
it out. We therefore recommend the establishment of an Interagency Working
Group on Space (IWGS).

The members of this interagency working group would include
not only the relevant parts of the intelligence community and the State
and Defense Departments, but also the National Aeronautics and Space Administration
(NASA), the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), the
Department of Commerce, and other Executive Branch agencies as necessary.

Meanwhile, the global presence and responsibilities of
the United States have brought new requirements for protecting U.S. space
and communications infrastructures, but no comprehensive national space
architecture has been developed. We recommend that such responsibility
be given to the new interagency space working group and that the existing
National Security Space Architect be transferred from the Defense Department
to the NSC staff to take the lead in this effort.

The Commission has concluded that the basic structure
of the intelligence community does not require change. Our focus is on
those steps that will enable the full implementation of recommendations
found elsewhere within this report.

First in this regard, we recommend that the President
order the setting of national intelligence priorities through National
Security Council guidance to the Director of Central Intelligence.